bilt2tumble:

brainstatic:

“I shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s healthcare” yeah, no, you should. We’re all soft, weak, hairless apes long removed from any species that could survive alone, and you’re alive because of the daily efforts a vast web of people just as weak and helpless as you. That’s what a society is. America requires you to pay extraordinarily little to the common good, but keeping your fellow witless apes alive is part of the small fee. Deal with it or try your luck in the wilderness.

… The deep-DEEP Wilderness. Like, where, if you fall & brake your leg, then manage to drag yourself back to your cabin for your radio, Search & Rescue can ask: ‘Why should we have to spend a shit-ton of money to helicopter out there and save your ass?’ Then you can consider humbly begging for help or sticking to your principles and possibly dying of thirst/starving to death in your cabin

The thing is:  you already are paying for other people’s healthcare.  

Every time you pay a hospital bill or pay the deductible on a doctor’s visit?  You’re paying for someone else’s care.  

Every outpatient clinic and private practice carries a certain percentage of patients who cannot pay.  Licensed practitioners are held to state ethics for their profession, which often specifies that you can’t simply turn away people with acute medical needs.  Many outpatient clinics that are part of a larger system are held to a institutional culture that you share the burden and take on as much unpaid care as your department can bear.  

Hospitals cannot turn away people if they’re experiencing a medical emergency, regardless of ability to pay.  They can’t discharge someone unless they have a minimally safe discharge plan.  Patients wait for days, weeks, and sometimes months before they can be transferred to a psychiatric facility or nursing home if they can’t go home.  

You know what people are recommended to do if they have an elderly or disabled family member that they can’t care for and can’t find a placement for?  Abandon your family member in an emergency room.  The hospital will have to care for them until a nursing home Medicaid or Medicare bed is found.  Surprise, surprise, it’s quicker and easier for hospitals to find those beds.

Where do you think that cost goes?  How do you think hospitals and medical practices calculate their fees?  We all share the burden of unpaid medical bills already, even in a “free market” model of health care.  It’s just that “free market” forces ratchet up the price because people who can’t pay end up waiting until it IS an emergency before seeking out care.  And then it costs a heck of a lot more than preventative care.  In the current set up, that’s what the market will bear.